Brisbane, Australia, 2016
“Nov Oeub was tested by a Khmer Rouge spy. After complaining of being hungry, the spy asked for something to eat. Oeub was kind to the spy and gave her rice. When the spy asked for a drink, Oeub replied as a joke ‘you will have to piss and drink if you want water as well!’ Oeub was punished very badly after that, and was taken to work far away from her family and children.” --Recounted by Neak Sophal from an interview with Nov Oeub, the subject of the image “Piss and Drink,”conducted for the Jorng Jam (“remember”) project.
Sophal participated in the collaborative Jorng Jam project that used interviews with family, friends and refugees to collect memories and personal stories of survival of the Khmer Rouge genocide as source material for their artworks. Carried out in two parts – the first in Cambodia, where the artists worked with people close to them, like family and in Sophal’s case, her teacher, to draw out personal stories from their experiences under the Khmer Rouge. The theme of the project was designed with the artists who, all under the age of 35 and never experienced the war firsthand, found that their art was a medium to open up conversations that often don’t take place between close relations.
For the second part of the project, the artists worked in Australia with former refugee Cambodian communities for an intense oral history interviewing process. It was during the second part that Sophal created the image “Piss and Drink.” These personal narratives served as a starting point for her to create minimalist portraits characterized by symbolic and performative gesture.
Placing her subjects, dressed in black, on a black background is well calculated for visual impact but also for the historical reference to the Khmer Rouge all-black uniform – a strategy to destroy identity and individualism. Against this dark background, the stoic face of the subject comes into sharp focus, thus restoring her identity. While carefully placed colorful threads dominate the foreground. In Cambodia, and all throughout the region, magic forms an important part of people’s daily lives. Specifically the use of magic-imbued threads and ‘Yorn’ (cloth with magic symbols painted on it) are issued by spiritually-empowered individuals to bestow luck and protection on its wearer. During the years of terror instituted by the Khmer Rouge, many people relied heavily on such talismans and sometimes they were their only possession (well hidden) that gave them hope of survival.
Currently the political climate in Cambodia limits the accessibility of an accurate historical accounting of the Khmer Rouge period. Like any contentious topic, it is filtered through the government controlled media and education. While there are institutions and organizations that are working to change that, it is in this environment that many artists like Sophal have appropriated the role of archivist and mediator in response. Creating works like “Piss and Drink,” a performance-documentation, articulates visually, and aesthetically, the impact of oral history and the link, bound metaphorically with colorful threads, between the past and present.
